It's a decade I'm only mildly familiar with. I was born in 1990, so I didn't grow up with it, and strictly in terms of prog, the only group whose output in that decade I've listened to extensively so far is Rush. I'm planning on getting more into it though. I won't negatively judge it before I give it a fair try

In spite of the "80s stigma" (due mostly to lots of crappy/silly new romantic & hair metal bands, though there's always a grey area), that decade had/has tons of great music, especially when it comes to progressive-electronic.

In spite of the "80s stigma" (due mostly to lots of crappy/silly new romantic & hair metal bands, though there's always a grey area), that decade had/has tons of great music, especially when it comes to progressive-electronic.

Do you mean the tons of movie soundtracks released by Tangerine Dream? Neither far comparable to their pink period, IMO.

I hated the 80's while I was growing up in that decade.Musically I liked british heavy metal, hardcore underground rap and Kate Bush.I was getting more and more into FZ and saw him live in Rotterdam in 1988.Most other music from that era didn't appeal to me very much.

Having been born in the 50s, I lived through the 60s/70s and saw prog emerge, flourish, then largely either descend into pomposity or commercialism. What came after was either punk, neo-romanticism or the alternative art rock of bands like Talking Heads. My initial reaction was to label all 80s music as ****.

But slowly, some gems emerged, Nostell Priory 198(3) introduced me to a fledgling Marillion, who rapidly became firm favourites. Later, I discovered IQ, whose first two albums I think are actually even marginally better than Marillion's first two. Big Country emerged from the ashes of the Skids and released some quite brilliant albums - some have definite progressive traits. Dire Straits became much more complex and sophisticated and released three albums which are quite superb and flit round the fringes of prog. A Celtic Rock band called Runrig emerged from the Western Highlands and released their third album, an astonishing concept album (Recovery), which had half the songs in their native language (Gaelic). Their followed it up with Heartland (equally astonishing) and a series of excellent, commercially successful "song" albums and a live album of incredible energy which ranks up there with the very best.

One or two of the 70s acts kept the faith. Camel reversed their late 70s decline with the brilliant Nude and, after a blip with The Single Factor, bounced back with Stationary Traveller, an album which improves enormously with repeated listening. Jethro Tull released Crest of a Knave which I don't like much but many do ( does anyone else think that, at times, they sound a bit like Dire Straits clones on this?).

And there's Asia. I don't regard their first album as particularly progressive but, if it had been released by four musicians who had never been in a prog band, I'd have liked it a lot (and I do) because the songs are great. Most of the hate seems to be because it was recorded by prog heroes who were viewed as "selling out".

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